


Daylight Robbery

by CheshireCaine



Category: DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Comedy, F/M, First Meetings, Pre-Relationship, Reader-Insert, forgive me my amateurish writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2018-01-19 15:43:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1475242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheshireCaine/pseuds/CheshireCaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Damsel with a short fuse + Distress) + The Red Hood = Flirting, if you tilt and squint</p><p>[Rewritten 22–08–16]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daylight Robbery

**Author's Note:**

> This is already posted on both my deviantART and Tumblr accounts.  
> . . .  
> I will always find this awkward to look back on.

"Where the heck am I?" You whipped your head around, attempting to gather your bearings. "Okay, so I turned left on Main Street . . . then I took the third right . . ." Speaking aloud helped you to pretend you weren’t lost. Unconsciously scrunching up your face, however, was just a sign you were trying really hard to deceive yourself. "But I know for sure I've never seen a map with 'Crime Alley' written on it."

You stuck out your arm, pointing at a battered old road sign three-and-a-half paces from you—a too-specific distance from someone who had plucked a number from thin air. "I mean who calls a place 'Crime Alley' anyway. It isn't what I'd call a 'good omen'. . . Time out—is that even a real sign?"

You stepped closer to the sign and—for the first time that day—got to be right about something. Whatever the street was actually called, you couldn’t tell. Red paint formed thick letters over the original name. Hoping to see the letters underneath without being blinded by the odd ray of sun, you squinted. Your own eyelashes flicked through your line of sight, but you managed to make out a ‘P’. P-A-R—Was that ‘PARK’? Then R. You were so caught up in the mystery. Until something shuffled, and you flinched, almost leaping back in astonishment.

"Hello. Is anybody there?"

Nobody replied. You stood there, your skin crawling with the itch to move. The hairs on your neck rose—it felt like you were being watched. You stayed in place, fixating on every small movement you made: your chest rising and falling as you breathed; the twitching of your fingers; the air being sucked in and blown out of your nose. But nothing happened. You turned to move away, reprimanding yourself for your paranoia and . . . something grabbed your hand.

"'ello there, sweetness." A haggard middle-aged man leered at you. His teeth gleamed with joy as he moved further into the light. His jaw was unshaven and his eyes were a violent red. "Could ya lend a pal a few bucks?"

Feeling more offended than scared, you simply said "No," and punctuated the word with a cold glare. Still angry, you tried to wrench your arm out of his grasp. "Now lemme go!"

"No can do, pumpkin," spitting the words out, he used his free hand to reach into his coat and pull out a vicious razor.

You stopped moving. He retracted his vice-like hand and used it to scrape underneath his fingernails for grime.

"Zat's right! Ain't nobody gonna say no to Sharp Billy!" He stumbled, nearly tripping over his own feet, and sent the smell of stale alcohol to waft over your face.

You gagged reflexively and he leaned closer. "So 'ows 'bout that money now."

You reached into your bag and carefully ( _oh, so carefully_ ) pulled out your wallet. Your brain, finally caught up, told you to 'throw it behind him to make a distraction'. You stretched out your arm preparing to fling it, but he snatched it. He leafed through it with a smirk painted on his lips; and tucked it into a pocket in the back of his jeans.

"What's a bird wi' money like yours doing 'round here."

". . ."

"Try'na look tough are ya, eh, pumpkin?"

"N-no." You shook your head feverishly in an attempt to dissuade him.

"'Zat so?" He didn’t seem convinced. He opened his mouth to talk some more, but his eyes widened and jaw dropped instead.

A boot slammed down onto his head, a leg coming into view, followed by a jacketed torso and a helmet. The creature landed on the thug's back. And slammed its helmeted head into his, for good measure. Then it turned around. "Are you alright?"

"Y-yeah, thanks to you." 

". . ."

"A–are you the Red Hood?

"Yeah, you scared?" he asked, humour edging its way into his voice.

"N–no. Well, not anymore."

"Is that so?" He inclined his head slightly in curiosity.

"W-well, you did just save me so, um, th-thank you . . . very much." You forced out the words and bowed your head, realising with embarrassment how much trouble you would have been in without him.

"You're very welcome." His words were surprising; you couldn’t have expected him to sound so sincere. At seeing your mouth agape, he tilted his head again. "Anything else?"

"N-not really." You cleared your throat. "It's just that I need my wallet back."

"Your wallet?"

"Yeah, he . . ." Your voice faded to silence as your eyes fell upon the unconscious thug.

"Oh, give me a sec'." He extracted it from the guy's pocket, glanced inside the main pocket and whistled. "Wow, for a girl walking the streets of the slum that is Gotham, you sure do have a lot of green. Money that is, not drugs—at least I hope not," he said, leaning forwards, like your appearance would somehow dictate otherwise.

"Hey, give me that!" You lunged towards him and he held you with a gloved hand pressed to the forehead while he crept in reverse. He bumped into a wall and turned his head without thinking, giving you the chance to yank your wallet from him.

"Nice reflexes."

You harrumphed in pride. "Thank y—"

The seemingly unconscious mugger pulled himself to his feet, skidded out of the alley, and ran round the corner—screaming all the way.

The Red Hood—well-known vigilante and merciless criminal—looked into your eyes (you thought) . . . and burst out laughing. His shoulders shook and he clutched his stomach in pain. Not wishing to bother your otherwise preoccupied saviour, you shuffled away.

"Well, er, thanks again," you said, peering down at your wallet for reassurance. "You really helped me . . . Where’s my money?"

"Your what?"

"My money, it's gone."

You stared at the eye-holes in his mask. "You!"

". . . Okay. Here you go," he confessed. Seeing the ferocity in your expression, he put more effort into appeasing you with: "I was just joking and I am truly, utterly sorry." He lobbed a sheaf of banknotes at you, which you caught and tucked into their rightful place.

"Fine then. But only since you're 'truly, utterly sorry'. Wait, did you give me more money? I get that you're sorry but you didn't need to— Half of this is just paper!"

A voice floated down to you from the rooftops. "My apologies, my dear lady. But how did you expect a poor lad, such as myself, to get home without enough for a bus fare?"

**Author's Note:**

> Please realise that I am still very much an amateur (something that is incredibly obvious) and forgive me my sucky writing.
> 
> I feel the need to explain your drunk would-be attacker's way of talking is probably really inconsistent, but he is meant to be really~ hammered. And the reader's manner of speech is weird because I tried to keep it without any use of language nor any leaning toward specific personality-types; first the reader is nice to Jason and later angry at him for perfectly justifiable reasons.
> 
> I wasn't really sure whether having the reader be the victim of a mugging was an . . . appropriate(?) choice in plot, but there are a lot worse, and how else would you meet a member of the Bat-family?
> 
> I hope I had Jason's character down, it isn't so easy to notice his mannerisms in the RHATO comics.
> 
> ————————————————————————————————————————————————
> 
> UPDATE 22-08-16: Over the past couple of days, while mostly trying to stay true to the original story, I've rewritten Daylight Robbery. For anyone wanting to know about future updates, let me say that yes, I have been working on a continuation. Except two, about an hour ago, I realised I want to take it a bit of a different direction. So, hopefully at some point soon, I'll have Chapter 2—just be a bit more patient, I'm gonna need time to re-map the plot. Until I've fully done that, any release(s) will be slow; and a bit more focussed on character development than plot development.
> 
> Hopefully that's good news for anyone hoping this story was going somewhere. tl;dr (It kinda is).
> 
> (How do people sign out from these?)


End file.
